Raven Darkholme

There is no difference whatsoever between the effect on a fight from WOD cheese and Strand cheese. Strand just makes it more convenient since you don't have to constantly rebuff every game. Obviously Strand is more powerful than WOD, but to call the one thing "cheating" (your definition of that word is very weird) and to say you are ok with the other one makes very little sense. You have 2 methods to become immortal and do ridicolous amounts of damage, one is more input heavy but the actual outcome on the fight is the same.

The point of my post was to answer a question, now what was the point of your post again?

MAybe I just misread the post, my impression was: Stealth was chosen over Strand of Favor, because you have to get a kill to aquire it. Which you don't.

You don't have to kill anyone for Strand of favor. Just talk to the ghost "left" from the kitchen (the place where you dive) or alternatively have enough stats to beat the dialogue skill checks.

There is many methods to level, the easiest is of course to just do non combat quests (can get to level 19 with very little fighting) If you aren't above using cheese bloodmage isn't necessary, you can get permanent brilliant (and many other things) with Strand of Favour cheese. The earliest you can aquire brilliant is to go to Hasongo before Neketaka, you should however visit Deadlight and Dunnage and do the non combat quests there, since this will also net you some money/sellables. From Hasongo you should find Captain Thaenic, if you went there straight after Deadlight/Dunnage (assuming this is a new game and you started at Maje/Sandswept Ruins) he will be somewhere east of Sayuka. Buy Assassins Slippers from him and go back to hasongo, smash any barrel (be sure to not have any torch or similar equipped if its an explosive barrel) and you will gain a very brief invisibility. If you immediately go to inventory you can equip/unequip strand of favor repeatedly to extend the invisibility, 100 equips would last for the entire game, keep in mind however the invis goes away when you fight. With newly aquired invis go to Concelhaut's island and you can very easily grab the brilliant cloak. While under Slippers of the Assassins effect you don't need to sneak to be undetected, which will also help you level up quite a bit. Now to get brilliant you simply cast Flame Wall on yourself while having Brilliant Cloak onb till it procs, then you do the same strand of favour cheese you did for the slippers just with brilliant.

If you don't use brilliant Fighter/Bloodmage is the safest multiclass. Wall of draining will extend anything op: Extending Unbending makes you immortal because everytime you get hit it will get added to the heal you already have. Extenhding Blade cascade will give you alotta damage Extending Deltro's will give you alottas sister Extending bdd potion for fights where you take injuries (can't die even with 3 injuries.

For single class I think Bellower is better, but only if you're doing strand of favor cheese for Eld Nary. Other than that 100% agree with the statements about Troubadour, which also has by far the best early game of all chanters.

Well if you want to 100% min max you don't play any class pure in 3.5e, but in terms of the bard you totally can. What breaks them isn't how you level them, except for your level 1 feat, Lingering Song, that makes songs stackable with each other and themselves :D.

Well ofc it depends on how you define "best". But the IWD2 bard is the most powerful bard in any rpg by far and also outshines any other class in that game, which tbf was kind of true for Poe1 bard, just not remotely on the same level. If you go by how well a bard is implemented flavor wise ofc poe did a wonderful job.

You should play IWD2 @OP I wouldn't worry about the summons too much you can play the chanter like a bard. If you have a priest in the party you can even extend the duration of the pure buff phrases via salvation of time, this allows a chanter to eventually put every single buff on the party but you might not have enough points on levelup to actually grab all of them. And as @omgFIREBALLSpointed out the chanter can still do other stuff while chanting, the only thing interrupting phrases is using invocations.

@Waski already made an Ultimate run with this, it was also him who found the Strand of Favor abuse, not me.

I'm not too familiar with the build, but as far as I can see most interactions should still work. Keep in mind that Alchemy got heavily nerfed and since the author heavily invested in it it might have been a crucial part. Potion of Piercing Strikes now gives you the same amount of Pen at any alchemy rank (just duration increases now), and it used to heavily scale with alchemy. This mostly means you can't use the same weapon for every fight and have to adjust to enemy AR. The build has very mediocre perception, but crits also help a lot with Pen. If you're looking for just a build to copy I wouldn't recommend it, since megabosses also got added to the game which require even more pen. If you're ready to make tweaks on your own, sure a very similar build can still work.

Well I got quoted twice claiming I was spreading false information(not by you), but enough bickering about that, it's too easy to misinterpret text. When I made my initial posts I assumed exactly what you typed "some bonuses will always stack", because by that point mainly Mohora Wraps were mentioned, which in my game also did not stack so to me it looked like my findings were the same findings others have made. But then @dgray62 reported they stack with Thunderous Blows and now I'm obviously convinced that something different than my initial "analysis" is going on. Saving and reloading seems to be the key, since a lot of unique item effects can be changed into a different (usually stackable) buff, I suppose the same is going on here with the food. (I have to add tho, the pause and rest exploit did not contain saving/reloading as far as I remember, I did it on stream but its been almost 2 years so my memory is quite hazy)

I'm not really following your logic anymore so this is probably my last post here... I should have used "maybe" instead of "I'm pretty sure", but your response makes it seem like I was claiming something is true (since you are claiming I'm spreading "false information", but I was just making an assumption and never wrote "This is what happened 100%". You're just completely misinterpreting what is meant by "it always worked", at least in my case I was just referring to the time this game has been out, aka it always worked on any patch. I can't say what works on other peoples pcs or whatever and only refer to what worked for me. I was referring to Hylea's/Adra interaction, quite likely the reason I quoted that.

I never claimed it wasn't a bug, every single post of mine in THIS THREAD has a reference to how this is unreliable and doesn't work with each food and buff. Maybe you should chill out before you post stuff like that and actually read what the other person wrote. While this is a bug it's not even an exploit in the classical sense. If you use Adra potion on top of Hyleas you WILL get them to stack eventually once you save and reload, unless you plan to run the Ultimate in a single session.

Maybe I was too unclear on this: If by definition a food buff is an active (which is the only way to make it not stack with other actives) then there is no way for it to stack with other food buffs. As for actual gameplay besides the theory, the problem is, while yes most food buffs will stack with inspirations and all kinds of other bonuses you might get from actives/food, there is also those weird exceptions where specific types of bonuses just won't stack or even specific foods as @Jaydpointed out for Mohora Wraps as example. Sadly this is one of the many areas of the game where you can't set a specific rule on what works and doesn't and have to trial and error it.

There is nothing to understand about it, it's just chaotic game design, you either know which specific bonuses stack or don't. As I already stated I tested it ages ago, and I can still load up my save even tho it was from before Ultimate patch the bonuses still stack the same way on current patch (Only thing that might have gotten patched is the process of stacking several food bonuses, but thats not really the point of the discussion anyway, if food bonuses stack with each other they will stack with other actives, except for those few exceptions you have to know about... Obsidian things) Heres some screenshots:

I have to agree with @Kaylon here. I also always played with resting bonuses and at some point in time (after all dlc and megabosses came out but WAY before the ultimate) I also made a char which abused the bug of stacking different resting bonuses on top of each other. Not only did resting bonuses always stack with actives, but also as mentioned you could have several (in fact all of them but who has time for that) stack with each other. One thing that is very important to note here is that certain stats in the game behave different towards stacking than others. Attributes will quite easily stack as long as you're not trying to stack 2 might inspirations or smth silly like that. Health bonuses on the other hand will under almost no circumstances stack, even from food the highest will always suppress the rest. I'm pretty sure that when @thelee tested it (and anyone else who did) they happened to try it with one of the stats who always get suppressed.

Hm I guess it depends on level of party. Solo it never takes me longer than 2 minutes to kill her I assume with party that would be quite a bit faster. But I also never do DLC and megabosses before level 16....

Kind of Ot, but keep in mind you don't need to dispel her Safeguard at all. Bleed Dots like Bleeding cut or Rogues Deep Wounds will completely destroy any enemies despite it being based on your intitial hit. Especially Bleeding cut with a 60 base duration where every hit stacks just about melts anything in the game. And ofc Nery specifically is also real weak vs fire, a wizard who waits until Kalakoth's minor blights change to fire and then extends it with wall of draining or a priest casting SOT (blights will stay in the damage type and not change if they get extended) will do serious damage too.

They SHOULD appear on gem merchant in Serpent's Crown, maybe just super rare? Not 100% sure tho.

Personally I only use Empower when I play Chanter with Sashas, otherwise I completely ignore the mechanic, so in its current form it's not the greatest. That being said not everyone is weird like me and never rests.

It does indeed.

I just tested it on Dorudugan since he is slow and hits hard. I've been mistaken all these years I loved to play fighters with Unbending (tbf I cheesed it a lot with draining wall or sot :P) and healing bonuses do not apply at all to Unbending, not the initial tick and also not the following ticks. (they just get +33% overall healing each time cuz stacking ofc)

I'm quite certain Unbending benefits from Healing bonuses. Chanter/Fighter with Mercy and kindness and unbending, maybe even Dawnstars blessing on top heals very close to 100% of damage taken. It isn't super easy to confirm this as @thelee said hot also stacks, but I'd be very surprised if for some strange reason my chars with a lot of healing bonus, somehow have better rng for stacking hot than chars with no healing bonus.